'Hobbit' hotels offer more than a hole in the ground

Dec. 26, 2012
|

'Hobbit' hotels offer more than a hole in the ground: With the blockbuster success of the newly released film, a number of lodgings are inviting guests to unleash their inner Bilbo Baggins. / Steve Michaels

by Jayne Clark, USA TODAY

by Jayne Clark, USA TODAY

Certainly not the proprietors of lodgings that take design inspiration from The Hobbit. With the blockbuster success of the newly released film, a number of lodgings are inviting guests to unleash their inner Bilbo Baggins.

Among them: the Inn at Honey Run, whose new $259 Hobbit Getaway Package includes a stay in an earth-sheltered Honeycomb Suite, breakfast, biscuits and jam in the room and a four-book, box set of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings series. (Or watch the movies in the inn's lower-level Hearth Room.)

The inn, located in Ohio's Amish country roughly midway between Columbus

and Cleveland, wasn't purposely built to mimic the earth-berm style of Tolkien's Shire, but the likeness nevertheless presents a not-to-be-missed marketing opportunity.

In northwest Montana, the resemblance of the Hobbit House to Tolkien's Middle-earth creation also was a chance occurrence - at first. Owner Steve Michaels set out to build a 1,000-square-foot guesthouse for friends and family, but part way through construction his contractor's son commented that it looked like a Hobbit House.

"I wasn't a Hobbit fan at all," Michaels says. "But I thought, 'Gee, that sounds like a good idea.' "

Gradually, a mini Shire took shape around the guesthouse. It now sports multiple hobbit-sized houses, an elf village and a troll house fashioned from a 700-year-old sequoia on 20 acres in Trout Creek about 2½ hours from Missoula. The guesthouse was booked about 85 nights this year (it's open May to November), but thousands stopped by for a tour, Michaels says.

The release of The Hobbit movie has brought an uptick in interest, he adds, though a letter last March from The Hobbit's copyright holders will spark a name change in the coming year. Hobbit House will become The Shire of Montana and Michaels is considering adding a tree house and a gift shop.

"Now that we're going to call it The Shire, we're going to have a lot more fun," he says.